أَعُوذُ بِاللّٰهِ مِنَ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ۔

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

اللہ کے نام سے شروع جو بڑا مہربان نہایت رحم کرنے والا ہے

In the name of ALLAH, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

A Different Shade of Colonialism: Egypt, Great Britain, and the Mastery of the Sudan By Eve M. Troutt Powell

Eve M. Troutt Powell is an American historian and she holds the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professorship in History and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches courses on Middle Eastern history, slavery, and race. Eve Troutt Powell did her Ph.D. (1995) in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University. She is the author of "A Different Shade of Colonialism: Egypt, Great Britain and the Mastery of the Sudan" (2003), and the co-editor of The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam (2001).

A Different Shade of Colonialism: Egypt, Great Britain, and the Mastery of the Sudan By Eve M. Troutt Powell shares analysis of nineteenth-century Egypt, which sheds new light on the complicated dynamics between colonial powers and colonized peoples. In this book, she traces the development of Egyptian nationalist identity during the time of British colonial rule over both Egypt and Sudan.

Drawing from a breadth of materials ranging from literary texts, newspapers, and travelogues to more colloquial sources (e.g., cartoons, plays, popular songs), Troutt Powell identifies a distinctly imperialist tone audible in Egyptian nationalist rhetoric. Her study underscores the ways in which Egyptian nationalists projected an image of Sudan as a fellow member of one Nile Valley community, while promoting the incorporation of Sudan’s land, and while Sudanese slaves and servants were still fixtures in many wealthy Egyptian homes.

Eve Troutt Powell also points to the ways that the intellectual and political elite distinguished themselves as racially and ethnically superior to the Sudanese, in much the same way that the British colonials distanced themselves from their Egyptian subjects. Thus, Troutt Powell introduces racial stereotyping and slave-holding, topics often overlooked in studies of the Middle East, as practices that played an integral role in the formation of nineteenth-century Egyptian self-image. In so doing, Troutt Powell presents a complex picture of a “colonized colonizer,” one that inspires nuanced interpretations of race-relations and the impact of colonial rule throughout the Middle East, Africa, and beyond.

The book therefore, actually is “An absorbing, important book about the triangular relationship between Britain, Egypt, and the Sudan and the ambiguous role Egypt played in that relationship as both colonized and colonizer. This book is very thought provoking and should stimulate reconsideration of the ambiguous role of colonial intermediaries.”

Eve M. Troutt Powell's "A Different Shade of Colonialism" examines the complex, triangular colonial relationship between Great Britain, Egypt, and the Sudan (1800s–1920s), focusing on Egypt as a "colonized colonizer". The main theme explores how Egyptian intellectuals developed their own nationalist identity and imperial attitudes towards the Sudan while simultaneously fighting British occupation.

Powell argues that Egypt, while resisting British domination, adopted its own colonial and racial attitudes toward the Sudan, treating it as a subordinate territory, which "A Different Shade of Colonialism - South African History Online" notes as an attempt to prove Egyptian superiority or modernity in the face of British encroachment.

The book shows how Egyptian nationalists and intellectuals (such as Rifa'a Rafi' al-Tahtawi and Mustafa Kamil) were conflicted, using colonial language regarding the Sudan while demanding independence from Britain.

The work investigates how Egyptians articulated their identity in relation to "African" identity and the history of slavery, aiming to define them as distinct from, and superior to, the Sudanese while attempting to emulate European administrative power. The narrative focuses heavily on the intellectual and social history of how Egypt tried to manage the Sudan, "A Different Shade of Colonialism" highlights how this "mastery" was used to counter British dominance.

Some Details From "A Different Shade of Colonialism" By Eve M. Troutt Powell

Eve Troutt Powell's "A Different Shade of Colonialism"; presents a refreshing contribution to the growing but underdeveloped field of slavery in Islamic societies. Furthermore, her work adds tremendously to discussions of both nationalism and empire, particularly the role of the "other" in defining both. She sees the development of Egyptian nationalism as something more than "a Manichean binary relationship between colonizer and colonized." Instead it was "a fluid relationship in which the colonizer came from more than one continent, and the colonized could aspire to be a colonizer not only by adopting the tools of the British or the traditions of the Ottomans, but also by making the Sudan a part of what defined Egypt as truly Egyptian".

Let's read from the book "In August 1894, a Bedouin slave dealer named Muhammad Shaghlüb led a small caravan to a stop in the village of Kerdessa, within sight of the Great Pyramids of Giza. The caravan consisted of six Sudanese women, purchased hundreds of miles to the south, who had walked slowly and barefoot with Shaghlüb and three other traders along the Forty Days’ Road, the old and well-traveled trade route that ended in lower Egypt. All were exhausted upon reaching Kerdessa, but Shaghlüb persevered, acting quickly to find an accommodating friend who agreed to hide the women on the top floor of his house. While the six women waited in this room, under admonition to be silent in the hot, cramped quarters, Shaghlüb went on to Cairo to negotiate for buyers for the six women."

"Shaghlüb and the other traders were only too aware that being caught with six African women by the authorities of the Slave Trade Bureau would mean imprisonment. Trade in African slaves had been abolished in Egypt in 1877, and the bureau had been created to search for unlawful caravans and to enforce the abolition. Nervously, Shaghlüb left Kerdessa to scout the carriage driver who dealt with the servants of elite households, a man in a position to know which families were eager to buy a Sudanese slave woman

or two. Within several days, Shaghlüb had found four wealthy buyers, and the six women were placed in new homes. The most prominent of these buyers was `Alï Pasha Sharïf, the head of the Egyptian Legislative Assembly."

"Ironically, `Alï Pasha had recently committed an act that would make this a cause célèbre: only weeks before, he had used the floor of the Legislative Assembly to petition the government to close down the many offices of the Slave Trade Bureau, saying that the practice had been discontinued for so long that Egyptians had forgotten the very meaning of the term slave trade Unfortunately for `Alï Pasha, Cromer did not agree with this line of reasoning, and ordered the Slave Trade Bureau to be doubly vigilant for illicitly

purchased slaves. One can only imagine the expression on Cromer’s face when he learned from Schaefer Bey head of the bureau, that an informant had alerted his office to Shaghlüb’s activities in Kerdessa and that the bureau had traced all six slave women, two of whom had been discovered in the spacious Cairo villa of none other than `Alï Pasha himself. Three of the four purchasers were immediately arrested and jailed along with the Bedouin traders, and their trial was set for early September, to be conducted in a military tribunal and presided over by a British magistrate. `Alï Pasha, however, escaped arrest by claiming Italian citizenship and seeking asylum in the Italian consulate"

Eve Troutt Powell's "A Different Shade of Colonialism" opens with a case that represents a microcosm of all the issues associated with the relationship between Egypt, Great Britain, and the Sudan. In 1894, the British discovered the illegal transport and sale of six Sudanese women. The most prominent of the purchasers was AIi Pasha Sharif, president of the Legislative Assembly, who recently had petitioned the government to close down the Slave Trade Bureau on the grounds that the trade no longer existed.

For Egyptian nationalists, this case meant proving that Islamic slavery was not the same as New World slavery and that indeed such a purchase was part of a mission to civilize the Sudanese, providing women with education and opportunity. For the occupiers, it represented "another example of the barbarity and despotism that kept Egyptians from being able to govern them, which justified the British presence in Egypt".

In chapter 4, Powell examines the intricacies of this fascinating case. AIi Sharif tried to shield himself from prosecution by claiming Italian citizenship. This move was successful only in granting him a trial separate from the slave dealers and other prominent purchasers. The dealers claimed that the women were "wives"; however, testimony by at least one of the woman proved that they were commodities. Both arguments by slave dealers claiming marital bonds and those by the purchasers emphasizing the magnanimity of Islamic slavery and its connection to the household confirmed British suspicions about the flawed nature of Egyptian family life.

Referring to the work of Lisa Pollard on this subject would have further enhanced Powell's arguments here. The great irony of the 1894 case was that the Sudanese women were given manumission papers and a stay in the Cairo Home for Freed Slaves, where they would receive training for domestic service. In other words, they were "freed" into the volatile world of an uncertain labor or marriage market to do the same work they would have performed as "slaves" in an elite (or at least middle-class) household.

Powell argues that this case was a metaphor for control of the Sudan, and just as oddly as the case ended, so too did the legal framework for control after Omdurman: an Anglo-Egyptian Condominium. Between the introduction where she first discusses the case and the subsequent chapter where it is dissected, Powell lays the groundwork for understanding its significance. Chapter 1 deals with the Muhammad Ali's conquest of the Sudan in 1821 and Egypt's rule of the area until 1863. In particular, it examines the narratives of four bureaucrats whose works demonstrate "the interplay between personal experience and memory, popular myths, and the changing constructions of racial identity that occurred in Egyptian society after the official conquest of the Sudan".

Western and Egyptian historians have long discussed the Sudan's significance for Muhammad Ali Pasha’s 1820–1821 invasion of Sudan was primarily driven by the desperate need to secure gold to fund his modernization projects and to procure enslaved people, specifically to create a new, disciplined army. Powell digs deeper, seeking to understand how both the viceroy and his bureaucrats sought European categories of classification to define and map the Sudan, and in doing so created a territorial and theoretical Egyptian nation.

Chapters 3 and 4 jointly describe the failed outcome of Egypt’s colonial rule in Sudan from the 1870s to the beginning of the 20th century and the Egyptian slave issue in Sudan. Chapter three is titled Contradictory Life Experiences: Ibrahim Fawzi’s Narrative of the Sudanese Region. Chapter 5 is entitled Egyptians with Black Faces: Revolution and Popular Culture (from World War I to 1925). This chapter mainly draws on the work of Egyptian nationalists such as Huda Shaarawi and Saad Zaglu. Le and others formed resistance and political demands against British colonial rule at the social level. Both Shaarawi and Zaghlul were keen to promote the unification of the Nile Valley, a vision that was as important as Egypt's independence, especially after the 1919 revolution. For example, Shalawi believes that it is not historical colonialism that connects the Sudanese region to Egypt.[5] Since then, although Egypt's domestic voice for Sudan has never diminished, under the strong British colonial rule, Egypt completely lost the opportunity to intervene in Sudan's affairs after 1924. The conclusion of Chapter Six echoes the beginning of the article. Through the analysis of the cartoons of Sudanese slave girls in the "Collection", the complex triangular relationship between Egypt, Britain and Sudan as colonizers and colonized people is revealed.

The Book "A Different Shade of Colonialism" by Eve M. Troutt Powell examines Egypt's ambiguous relationship with the Sudan in the period from approximately 1800 to the late 1920s. She suggests that this relationship was complicated by Egypt's position as a

"colonized colonizer" - that is, as an imperial power in the Nile Valley which itself became vulnerable first to French and later to British colonialism. Powell focuses on Sudan- or Sudanese-related commentaries by key Egyptian thinkers, including travelers, journalists, and others, many of whom (such as Rifa'a Rafi' al-Tahtawi, Mustafa Kamil, and Huda Sha'rawi) played prominent roles in the making of modem Egypt.

Whereas Egyptians often cast themselves in the role of civilizing agents who had a mission to play in the Nile Valley, they often portrayed Sudanese as slaves and servants: this Powell shows after consulting a wide spectrum of 19th and early 20th century Arabic texts that range from fictional and non-fictional narratives to dialogue sequences in stories and plays, and even to political cartoons. These texts recurrently and stereotypically characterized the Sudanese as sexually licentious, coarse and half-naked, and alternately passionate and dull-witted - namely, with traits that were the opposite of educated, rational refinement. Thus presented, the Sudanese offered ideal material for Egyptian civilizational tutelage and boosted Egyptian cultural and political morale, particularly after the British occupation of 1882 when Egypt became informally colonized.

Scholars and students of modern Egyptian history will find "A Different Shade of Colonialism" to be a fascinating and thought provoking study. For a start, it is methodologically creative in marshaling literary texts for the study of Egyptian social and cultural history. It also presents an intriguing critique of imperialism in the region, by demonstrating that it operated not merely on an Occident-Orient (or in this case Britain-Egypt) model, but also according to local patterns of domination, as evinced by the rights and relations that Egyptians asserted (or tried to assert) vis-a-vis the Sudan.

Indeed, Egyptian nationalists in the early 20th century continued to evoke claims that went back to 1820 when the armies of Muhammad Ali had first conquered Sudanese territories. As a history of Egyptian thought about the Sudan, "A Different Shade of Colonialism" is not a history of the Sudan itself. The description of the whole Mahdist era ( 1881- 1898) as a period of "rebellion" (p. 12), for example, reflects an Egyptian view of the region's history that is at variance with most Sudan-centered interpretations of the period’s local significance.

Nevertheless, from the Sudanese history perspective, Powell's exposure of Egyptian attitudes towards Sudanese peoples does provide valuable material for understanding Sudanese Egyptian relations in the 20th century, particularly with regard to the issue of Nile Valley nationalism (rooted in notions of Egyptian--Sudanese cultural and political unity).

Historians of the Sudan have long acknowledged the major impact that Egyptian journalism and literature had on early Sudanese nationalism, the prominence of Egypt as a source of new ideas among educated Arabic-speaking Sudanese, and the importance of pro-Egyptian political sentiments among some segments of the northern Sudanese population.

But the limits of Egypt's appeal to early Sudanese nationalists become more clear thanks to Powell's book. Paternalistic at best, insulting and belittling at worst, the attitudes of Egypt's leading intellectuals towards the Sudanese clearly restricted possibilities for genuine political partnership in the early- and mid20th century. Even those northern Sudanese thinkers who were most enthusiastic about the idea of Nile Valley unity realized, by Sudanese independence in 1956, that this fine theory had practical constraints.

There were significant commonalities between the Egyptian and Indian elites under British colonization. Both groups were essential to British "indirect rule" strategies, acting as intermediaries between the British administration and the local population, while often navigating a complex mix of collaboration and opposition to colonial policies.

In both regions, the British favored established, large-landowning elites—such as Egyptian Pashas and Indian Zamindars—to manage the rural economy, collect taxes, and maintain social order. The British re-engineered local power structures to favor these loyalist elites over smaller farmers or rural middle classes, ensuring a congruent political and economic base.

Both Egyptian and Indian elites were often educated in British-style institutions, creating a "white-collar" class that staffed the lower and middle levels of the colonial bureaucracy.

Both elites were deeply connected to the colonial economic engine, particularly in cotton-producing regions like Egypt's Nile Delta and India's Bombay/Punjab regions. These areas were highly aligned with British interests in supplying raw materials for British manufacturing.

Elites in both countries were often viewed as collaborators by their own people, serving a foreign power to maintain their local privilege. However, many also served as the leadership of early, moderate nationalist movements, attempting to negotiate increased autonomy for their respective countries within the British framework.

Through the interwar period, elites in both regions were linked by a shared political identity often termed "Easternism." This was a cross-cultural collaboration—often involving Indian pan-Islamists and Egyptian nationalists—that recognized a common enemy and shared a desire for national sovereignty.

While the Indian subcontinent was fully integrated into the British Raj, Egypt was technically an "occupied" territory under the nominal sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire (until WWI) and then a nominal Egyptian monarchy. This meant British control in Egypt was sometimes more informal (yet firm) compared to the direct administrative control in India.